Hello Readers!

Merry Christmas to you all! I hope your Christmas season is filled with delicious food, good people, and soul filling conversations. Remember, eat your fiber first while you are feasting this week – it’ll help you avoid too many blood sugar spike 🙂

This year I am celebrating “on the go” as I am en route to Krakow, Poland to spend a few days exploring, eating, and getting to know where my ancestors come from.

I’m going to write this as a sort of “hour by hour” update of my Christmas. Usually I spend days working on an article and carefully think through it, but today I’m writing live and on the fly (literally on the fly).

9:20pm Christmas Eve, Philadelphia, USA

I left Philadelphia last night with the intention of flying to London to connect to Poland. Well, sometimes plans change in the airport at the gate and you end up going to Portugal first – so I’ve turned this day into a “let’s see how many countries I can visit in one day” challenge. The question of “how did you end up going to Lisbon instead of London” is valid, but complicated, haha. Read through to the end to find out why I had to change the plans in such a weird way.

Country count: 1 (USA)

10:27am Christmas Morning, Lisbon Portugal

The jet lag really is setting in. I think I slept about 2 hours on the flight from Philly but that isn’t going to stop me from getting an excellent Portuguese breakfast.

Now, I have eaten a Portuguese egg tart (Pastel de Nata) before… but I’ve never eaten one IN Portugal. So… I had to change that! This small delight is a perfect 3 bites of eggy custard filling in a flakey delicious crust. It’s simple, and splendid. In the USA you can occasionally find them at a good Portuguese bakery and I highly recommend it.

Thanks for the pastries, Lisbon, I can’t wait to come back. Time to board my flight to London!

Country count: 2

3:44pm Christmas Day, London, England, United Kingdom

Ahh, this is where I was supposed to be one flight in, but I made it! Now, I have a couple hours here in London – what does one eat on Christmas Day in London? Well, in an airport where almost everything is closed, your choices are: burgers, fish and chips, or Starbucks.

I was supposed to have about 13 hours in London and I would have gone to the city to explore, but with the extra stop in Lisbon, I only have 4 hours here so I’m staying in the airport.

Country count: 3

7:50pm Christmas Evening, flight leaves London for Krakow, Poland

Okay the jet lag is really getting to me, I might start writing some strange things! Let’s get to Krakow please 🙂

11:57pm Christmas Night, Krakow Poland

Wow! I made it. I think this comes out to about 23 full hours of travel from start to finish, if you factor in the time difference.

If you made it this far, here’s why I ended up in Portugal instead of London on the first flight: I was flying on airline “buddy pass” benefits… which means: you only get to fly if there is space available on the flight. Well London seemed to have the most seats open which is why I chose that flight in the first place. But at the last minute, the London flight filled up and actually over sold. I didn’t get a seat. So the next gate over from the London gate in Philadelphia was the Lisbon flight (gate A24 haha) so I ran over there. I just needed to get to Europe and figure out how to get to London in time for my 8pm-ish flight that I actually paid for… hopefully that makes sense. In the end it was a long long day, but hey… I have been in four different countries on two continents this Christmas Day – never something I thought would happen, haha!

Country count: 4

Phew! Thanks for following along on this journey with me, now I can’t wait to shower, sleep and explore Krakow in the morning.

Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night 😴